huxley:

On the Cosmological Argument (CA), Part 2.

On my earlier posts about the CA on this thread, I attempted to cast doubt on the reasonableness of making an inductive inference about the conditions that obtains in the present universe with respect to conditions that obtained "before" this universe came into being. I call this the [b]Boundary Conditions [/b]refutation of the premiss that every thing that begins to exist has a cause. Another way to put this refutation is to ask whether the properties or attributes internal to the universe are the same as the properties of the universe. This remains to be demonstrated.

On this post, I intend to examine the concept of "Begin to Exist". What does it mean for something to begin to exist? I contend that the CA, especially this Kalam variety, has gotten a lot of mileage recent, thanks to William Lane Craig, mainly as a result of the general illiteracy of metaphysical and ontological matters by the general public. Granted, metaphysic and ontological analysis are very difficult subjects to contemplate and I claim no expert knowledge in these myself. But it should be obvious even to the most casual observer that the idea of "begin to exist" is not as trivial a matter, meriting no further explication, as seems on the surface. Advocates of Kalam CA, maybe knowingly exploit the public ignorance of metaphysics to sell to the public a defect argument.

Now, let's examine what exactly it means for something to "begin to exist". There are two ways one could examine this:

1) The general examination of "begin to exist" which relates to the ontology of things
2) The particular case of "begin to exist" as used in the CA, which relates to the theory of causation.

On this post, I shall only examine 1) and will look at 2) in a subsequent post. I shall start by asking the following questions:

i) Can anyone think of something that "begins to exist" and point out the exact time and space when the existence began?

ii) When does a painting begin to exist? Is it in the painter's head? Is it when the paint was manufactured? Is it when the canvass was stretched out on a wooden frame?

iii) When does a child begin to exist? Is it when her parents were themselves born, noting that her mother would have been born with near all her eggs in place? Is it when that particular sperm that fertilised her mothers eggs was made in her father's body? Is it when her parents had sex? Is it when the eggs and sperms fused? etc, etc?

iv) When did the sun begin to exist? Was it when the matter that accreted into the sun 5 billion years ago? Was it about 10 billion years ago when most of this matter was initially made?


I hope with the above question, it is possible to see that this is not a trivial questions with no trivial answers. As far as we know from science, things around us are simply forms of energy and things don't just "begin to exist", but matter/energy is transformed from one form of energy or state into another form of energy or state, invariably with no finite abrupt phase change time, but with slow imperceptible transitions.

I contend that premise 1 of the CA is not a cast-in-stone premise and should really not be accept as a logically unassailable premise.

I'm very interested to see how you go about this counter argument. I am not an advocate of the cosmological argument either, but all the same I'm keen to see what your objections are.

Just a couple of thoughts . . . when it says begin to exist it might be referring no only to matter or the substance of an object but rather to a particular state. States are objects too. In fact everything can be said to be just a state, whereby when basic substance is molded into one state it is one type of object and when it is molded into another state it is another type of object.

Another way to look at it . . . basically everything you can make a statement about is an object. A car is an object (you can say the car is red). The speed at which a car is moving is an object (The speed of the car is 9miles an hour). The rate of change of the cars speed is an object (the acceleration is 2miles/s/s.) etc

When we talk about things coming into existence are we talking about the basic substance from which it is made or the state it is in. We can say that it comes into a state. The cup of hot water came to be at 9am. Prior to that there was a cup of cold water and then the hot water came into existence. But is the cup of cold water identical to the cup of hot water.

When an object changes, it always changes in some particular way. A baby grows up, and so changes in respect of size and maturity; a snake sheds its skin, and so changes in respect of its skin. "Change" may therefore be defined as follows:
An object, O, changes with respect to property, P, if and only if O has P at one time, and at a later time, O does not have P.
That seems to be, in one way, what it means for a thing to change: it has a property at one time, and later it does not have that property. If a banana becomes brown, it can then be said: at one time, the banana is yellow; several days later, the banana is not yellow, but is instead brown. This appears fairly straightforward at this point, and there are no apparent problems as yet.
Another way for an object to change is to change its parts.
An object, O, changes with respect to its part, P, if and only if O has the part P at one time, and at a later time, O does not have P.
Some philosophers believe that an object can't persist through a change of parts. They defend mereological essentialism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_and_change

Tudór:
I fail to understand how you can make this assertion yet claim the universe can never be infinite. . . .it's just strange!

It was strange to me too Tudor! They claim everything has to have a beginning, but claim God has no beginning. It don't quite add up, I say.

Personally, I read book and realise that once we get to just about 4000 years ago, history is more mythological than factual. Evidence does suggests that the earth is at least 10,000 years old, and some suggest it's 10,000 billion years old. But if we are fuzzy on history of 10,000 years ago, I can't but ask why I have to make up myths for earlier than that!

I fail to understand how you can make this assertion yet claim the universe can never be infinite. . . .it's just strange!

If Christians claim that the universe can never be infinite, this mean that they believe that the universe have a boundary, a limit, then what is behind this boundary or limit?. I hope that a christian can answer this question.

Horus:

If Christians claim that the universe can never be infinite, this mean that they believe that the universe have a boundary, a limit, then what is behind this boundary or limit?. I hope that a christian can answer this question.

Well at the border of the universe there is this great big wall. Now, if you can climb over this wall to the other side you will find yourself back where you started. every successful attempt to scale the wall will only put you back to the one and same side of the wall. If you don't believe me ask Alice in Wonderland.

buda atum:

It was strange to me too Tudor! They claim everything has to have a beginning, but claim God has no beginning. It don't quite add up, I say.

Personally, I read book and realise that once we get to just about 4000 years ago, history is more mythological than factual. Evidence does suggests that the earth is at least 10,000 years old, and some suggest it's 10,000 billion years old. But if we are fuzzy on history of 10,000 years ago, I can't but ask why I have to make up myths for earlier than that!

This was because written language was invented by the Sumerians a little after 4000 BC, in the form of cuneiform scripts meaning wedged shaped scripts to records their myths and stories about their royalty.

The Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Assyrian, and Luwian languages, and inspired the Old Persian and Ugaritic national alphabets. It was from these scripts that other scripts emerged with their myths and stories in varied forms.

Pastor AIO:

Well at the border of the universe there is this great big wall. Now, if you can climb over this wall to the other side you will find yourself back where you started. every successful attempt to scale the wall will only put you back to the one and same side of the wall. If you don't believe me ask Alice in Wonderland.

I am sure though that Humpty Dumpty in his "words mean exactly what I say they mean" way, would state that the great big wall is really a great big hole, and that's what Alice fell into.

KAG:

Oh, it's a fair point that sometimes people cling dogmatically to their preset definitions of terms, but I suspect that even in spite of that, with definitions already given, by both parties, for thorny words, those in the discussion would, at the very least, know what the other means to say when a vagueish term is used.

Also, you'll note that it is now, with this post that you have defined a triangle in such strict way as to avoid any misconception of what you mean. With your previous definition - "[anything that has] three sides with angles that add up to 180 degrees" - a square could have been mistaken for a triangle (after all, three of its sides do add up to 180), thereby ensuring that you and another talk past each other. That happens quite a bit.

The original definition I gave was as clear as it can possibly be. By that definition, it was clear that the shape under consideration has only 3 sides and that the angles in this three sided figure or shape add up to 180 degrees. No one said anything about a triangle being defined as “something which only three of its four (or more than three) sides could add up to 180 degrees”. That is simply reading into the definition something clearly not there. No sensible person is going to read into that definition a claim that a square could be mistaken for a triangle, I suspect, because a square has [b]FOUR [/b]sides not three. Besides, the internal angles of a square add up to more than 180 degrees.

KAG:
I know what the first premise states: "Anything with a beginning has cause." It's wrong. By the way, you're operating on a false premise. That is, that some things, given a quantum fluctuation, etc. may pop into existence spontaneously is not an indication that everything and anything will or should. No, that's a nonsense argument. That particles can be in a state of indeterminacy doesn't mean the moon disappears when I turn my back on it.

You have not shown me how the first premiss is wrong. So far, you are ignoring the full explication of the first premiss. First of all, if you understood the first premiss, it is not just saying that there is a cause or explanation for whatever begins to exist: such causes are not necessarily material causes—they can be efficient causes as well. Like I explained further, “Nothing indeed comes out of nothing, from nothing by nothing”.

You are yet to demonstrate that this is the case with virtual particles.

Virtual particles do not come out of NOTHING neither indeed are they brought about by NOTHING.  The statement “that some things, given a quantum fluctuation, etc may pop into existence spontaneously, ” (emphasis mine) betrays the hollowness of this objection. Why should anyone grant you this ‘quantum fluctuation’ if you are making the argument that there is no cause or explanation for virtual particles? I suspect the problem here is the fact that these virtual particles randomly pop in and out of existence. But the indisputable fact is that the cause of virtual particles is indeed this quantum or vacuum fluctuation which is highly indeterministic—only that it isn’t a material cause but an efficient one. Furthermore, it is very clear that this quantum fluctuation is not operating on NOTHING, but rather on the quantum vacuum—which as I have explained earlier is not NOTHING. It is a roiling sea of energy. Given all these realities, it is very absurd to pretend that virtual particles violate the first premiss.

The comment about the moon is just an unfortunate strawman—it has no relevance here. We cannot be mixing up classical physics with quantum physics. At any rate, if one were to seriously focus on the objection, the moon is not posited to have sprang out uncaused out of nothing, from nothing and by nothing. That is a position that no serious physicist would take.  If anything can arise out of nothing, from nothing and by nothing, (which means we can’t grant you fluctuations in the already existing quantum vacuum) then the earlier observation still stands—and by that deduction, anything and everything ought to be popping into existence all the time.

KAG:
Also, the "law" "energy can neither be created nor destroyed" was "empirically confirmed by science" until it wasn't. The arguments for virtual particles and radioactive decay are actually scientific findings.

No one is denying the scientific veridicality of virtual particles or the radioactive decay process/event. What you seem to be suggesting here is that science is not rigid but dynamic-so that what was once thought to be the best explanation of physical reality can eventually be revised in the light of new knowledge. I happen to agree with this. In this case however, there is no hope that there’d ever be a time when physically instantiated entities in this universe will be shown to have no physical cause or explanation. To put it simply again, there is no chance that whatever that begins to exist in this universe can be shown to have arisen out of nothing, from nothing, and by nothing. "Being" simply just does not come from "non-being".

KAG:
Um, not quite. They are perfect counter-examples because they show that the first premise of your argument - the cosmological argument, and other subsets and antecedents - has been falsified. Yes, quantum fluctuations precede virtual particles, but there is no apparent cause for them. And once again, that space isn't a vacuum doesn't impact on the case of virtual particles. It isn't cause by anything in the vacuum of space.

Once again, without a quantum vacuum (a roiling sea of energy at the quantum level) there cannot be any quantum fluctuations (temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in the quantum vacuum). Furthermore, without a quantum fluctuation, there cannot be the random and spontaneous creation of virtual particles. Quantum fluctuations not only have to precede virtual particle creation, for any virtual particles to begin to exist, or to be detected in experiments, there has to be some quantum fluctuation or excitation in a quantum field. That is why quantum fluctuations are considered the efficient causes of virtual particles.

No one is suggesting that virtual particles are caused by some other thing in space but that the very thing you call "vacuum" at the quantum level is pervaded by rich energy and that an excitation or a fluctuation in this roiling sea of energy can generate virtual particles which disappear almost immediately rejoining the quantum vacuum itself. It can be likened to how the turbulent and erratic churning of the sea can sometimes cause waves to shoot water molecules up into the air and shortly afterwards the specific water molecules disappear or rejoin the sea. Like I said once more, these virtual particles, do not arise out of nothing, from nothing or by nothing.

Hence, I do not think this is a valid defeater for the first premiss.

buda atum:

I am sure though that Humpty Dumpty in his "words mean exactly what I say they mean" way, would state that the great big wall is really a great big hole, and that's what Alice fell into.

You're talking about what lurks at the bottom of Lewis Carroll's garden. Things are quite different at the bottom of my garden. I need a wall to keep out arm robbers. That's the difference between 9ja and jand.

Atheism is another form of religion.

This religion unlike the new age Christianity is guaranteed not to chop your hard earned money nor turn you into Boko Haram nor get you to slaughter your dogs for sacrifices.

In fact, its the coolest thing. Atheists rock!!

Pastor AIO:

You're talking about what lurks at the bottom of Lewis Carroll's garden. Things are quite different at the bottom of my garden. I need a wall to keep out arm robbers. That's the difference between 9ja and jand.

Have you tried digging a hole? They might fall down it like Alice did. I hear the west side is the best place for it.

Sorry to seem to be bumping this thread but I am just using style to bookmark it because of some seriously powerful posts by the poster Prizm.

z-murda:

Atheism is another form of religion. *3

This religion unlike the new age Christianity is guaranteed not to chop your hard earned money*1 nor turn you into Boko Haram nor get you to slaughter your dogs for sacrifices.

In fact, its the coolest thing. Atheists rock!!

*1 >>> this guy ain't heard of non-believers giving aid >>> besides the Dawkins-Tinmonen fiasco >>> should deal the wanton
     >>> coupe de grace to this obtuse statement crap 

*2 >>>  yeah right !!! probably I should join the animal rights campaign 

*3 >>> the only tittle of your post which can pass off as sensible 

@ huxley & other atheists >>> SMH >>> this only means , more rigmaroles, shenanigans, which leads only to a strength of one's pre-ordained
    convictions >>> In the words of Heuy Freeman I declare that: Hope is irrational

Uyi really wishes to contribute but has preocuppations at the moment >>> the primary one being his upcoming mid-semester exams >>> but has eaten some of the posts >>> especially those of Huxley & Prism to cogitate on

@ Huxley >>> you are marked >>> I shall definitely chance you on this forum >>> and (hopefully) will be well-prepared (and in a good position) to state my arguments against your line of thought

Enigma:

Sorry to seem to be bumping this thread but I am just using style to bookmark it because of some seriously powerful posts by the poster Prizm.

The chap really dealt with the issue that most pple ran out of gas. I read his posts from the first page&learned some things from them. I'm convinced the atheists did as well.

Bookmarked